Flowers of the Free Lands. By Thomas Bracken. (Mills, Dick,
and Co., Dimodin.)—This is a volume of short poems on a variety of themes, some of general, others of local interest, Several of these poems possess considerable intrinsic merit, and they are all calculated to please English readers, because they are instinct with the fresh and vigorous vitality of colonial life in its best and healthiest aspects, and full of love and loyalty to England. Mr. Bracken's poems give us a pleasant insight into the " ways " of the dwellers in "the Free Lands," as ho proudly calls our Australasian Colonies, and they depict with bright and picturesque touches the beauties of nature there, and the associations which they awaken. The contrast of the seasons with ours, the home- linoes of life, the vastness of the country, the simpler interests and tho rougher history, the comradeship of the colonies, are brought home to us by these poems, of which the least ambitious please us the most. "April here and April there " is a very pretty poem, with the true lyrical ring in it; and "Sleeping Alone" is a solemn and touching picture of burial in the bush, " whore but few have trod,"—of pro- found solitude amid the animation of nature. " The Old Log Hut," "Old Bondigo"—a capital digger's yarn—and "Bush Children," in which the writer watches and records the sports of a troop of blooming urchins, for whom,
" By-and-by there's work to do,—
They have yet to build a nation," are full of character and spirit. Mr. Bracken has evidently a great facility for writing verses to fit occasions, a talent as infrequent and valuable as that of clever after-dinner speaking. His "National Hymn" for Now Zealand, and his addresses at sundry "entertain- ments," benefits, and "dedications," are remarkably good examples of a difficult branch of the poetic art.
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